


6 Reasons Why Cecil's Sister Hated Carlos

by emilyshee



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Gen, M/M, Pre-Condos, Pre-Live Show: Condos, family stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-25
Updated: 2014-09-25
Packaged: 2018-02-18 18:36:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2358095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emilyshee/pseuds/emilyshee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos really wants to make a good impression on Cecil's family, so he's eager to please when Steve asks him to come over and help with one of Janice's science projects.  And he thinks everything's going great - but what he doesn't know is that Cecil's sister is just as good at hiding her true feelings as Cecil is at wearing them on his sleeve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	6 Reasons Why Cecil's Sister Hated Carlos

  1. **The Obvious**



Well, because she wanted to hate him, as payback for how much Cecil hated Steve. But even she had to admit that that was unfair, and if that was all it was, she’s sure she would have conquered it pretty quickly. But there were other reasons.

  1.  **He was nice.**



When she got home from work, she found Janice crying. Not the helpless, unashamed tears of the little girl she had been only a few years before, that pulled at your heart like nothing else but were also almost funny in their ostentatious pathos. These were the tears of a girl who should be and usually was too old to cry, overwhelmed by anger and frustration. Steve stopped patting Janice’s shaking back and walked over to her, taking her briefcase and mumbling something about a science project that Janice couldn’t seem to get right. The fresh coffee he usually met her with as she came home was sitting on an end table where he’d abandoned it to comfort Janice. Steve made a “your turn” gesture towards Janice with his head before leaving the room, and she resumed his place beside their daughter, rubbing her shoulder and murmuring low, reassuring noises.

“I will never be a scientist,” Janice sobbed, “I’m just – too – stupid!”

“Honey, you are not stupid. And you’ll be anything you want to be.”

Janice only shook her head.

“Everybody makes mistakes sometimes, sweetie. Just because you messed up one science project does not make you a failure.”

“I messed - it up - three times,” Janice gulped out. “I did – exactly – what – the book – said – and I – couldn’t – get it – to work!”

“That happens, sweetie. It’ll be OK.”

Steve came back into the room holding the phone to his ear.

“Veal chocolate chip,” Steve was saying to whoever was on the other end, “OK, we’ll see you soon! Thanks.”

“So I called Cecil,” Steve announced, hanging up the phone. “Carlos said he would come take a look at Janice’s project.”

“Carlos is coming here? He’s not busy at the lab?”

“Apparently, it’s the first evening off he’s had in two weeks.” said Steve.

“Well then he should be spending it with Cecil, not coming over here.”

“That’s what I said when I found out, but he insisted that he wanted to come. Said something about a Scientists’ Code.”

Janice had managed to stop crying and was listening to their conversation with interest.

“Carlos isn’t going to call me a future scientist anymore when he sees what a mess I’ve made,” Janice grumbled, but she didn’t sound so despairing anymore.

“I’m sure his opinion of you won’t change in the slightest. And you don’t call grown-ups by their first names.”

“He told me to call him that! He said everyone else in town does,” Janice said.

“All right, then. Steve, why did you say ‘veal chocolate chip?’”

“Oh, Carlos wants to bring ice cream.”

Of course he did.

  1. **He was good with Janice.**



They’d met Carlos a few times, but he’d never been to the house before. She insisted on vacuuming the living room (even though Steve told her that he’d done it yesterday) and had just finished dusting the bookshelf when Carlos walked in with Cecil about 20 minutes after Steve’s phone call. He paused only to give a polite hello to both adults before walking straight over to Janice.

“I hear you have a fascinating science problem.”

“Thanks for coming to help me, but it’s not a fascinating science problem,” said Janice, who had managed to shift from desperately frustrated to quietly glum while watching her mother stress-clean, “We have to do an experiment for science class, and mine keeps coming out wrong.”

“But that’s exciting! When you don’t get the results you expect, that’s when you learn the most. Almost none of my experiments work the way they’re supposed to here.”

“Really?”

“Really. That’s why I came to Night Vale. Figuring out what makes so much of the data come out wrong here is the most scientifically interesting thing I’ve ever gotten to do!”

“Maybe I’m just doing it wrong because I’m really bad at science.”

“Experimenter error is one possibly hypothesis to explain what’s going wrong,” Carlos admitted, “But I propose two alternate hypotheses. One, the unexpected results are caused by what my team has taken to calling ‘typical Night Vale weirdness’ or Two, they are the result of faulty equipment. How could we set up an experiment to test one of those hypotheses?”

There was a pause.

“I guess we could test the last one by repeating the experiment with better equipment, but I don’t have any.”

“I brought some stuff from the lab.” Carlos smiled. “It’s in the car.”

“Really?” And despite the situation, Janice looked excited at the thought of getting to use professional scientific equipment from a real lab.

“Yes. But we’re missing something.”

“A control group,” Janice said thoughtfully. “We should also repeat the experiment with my stuff so we can compare results?”

“Excellent. Come on, you can help me get everything out of the car.”

“We can set up in the backyard on the picnic table.”

“Great.”

Carlos followed Janice outside, with Cecil trailing behind them.

  1.  **He was perfect.**



When she came outside a couple of hours later, Carlos was sitting on the end of the picnic table bench, on the side that Cecil had cut short for them years ago to make room for Janice’s chair. He’d put one of his extra lab coats on her, with the sleeves rolled up only a little now that she was getting so big, and they looked pretty cute sitting side by side with their matching coats and goggles, looking over the same experiment.

“I think they’re almost done,” said Cecil, who was sitting on a lawn chair next to the back door where he could watch from out of the way.

“They’ve been at it for a while.”

“Apparently, they needed to experiment with a lot of variables before they could figure out what was going wrong.”

“All right!” Carlos shouted suddenly, “The same thing happened for the last three times in a row! Do you know what that means we have?”

“Duplicable results!” cried Janice. Carlos held up two hands and Janice gave him a double high-five.

Even she had to admit, that was completely adorable.

“Dinner’s ready,” she called from the door, “Janice, go wash your hands.”

“OK, Mom.”

Janice wheeled over to the back door while Carlos started clearing away some of the equipment. At the doorway Janice paused and looked over her shoulder.

“We can clean up after dinner,” she said, “Come on, Uncle Carlos.” Janice went inside.

For a moment, Carlos looked stunned. Then he looked over at Cecil and his entire face broke into the brightest smile she had ever seen from him. This must have been how he’d smiled at that long ago town meeting where he’d declared Night Vale “scientifically interesting” and announced his intention to figure it out. It was an “I can’t believe how lucky I am smile,” completely delighted and astonishingly grateful, but most of all, totally, utterly, absolutely perfect.

No wonder her stupid younger brother had fallen in love instantly with that smile.

  1. **He was good with Steve.**



She had begged Steve, time and time again, not to bring up politics in front of her brother. And Steve always promised. But Steve had that almost compulsive obsession with the truth, which she admired in him even when she didn’t completely agree with what his truth was, and it made it hard for him to keep silent. She had stressed how important it was not to cause a scene tonight, during Carlos’s first dinner with them as a family, and she could tell he was trying, but he was already under strain from agreeing to pretend that they’d bought the stroganoff from Mrs. Tankova at the deli – if Cecil knew that Steve made it he would force himself to hate it on principal, but Steve struggled with even sensible social lies – and the effort of not contradicting him when Cecil complimented Mrs. Tankova’s cooking had weakened him for the rest of the dinner conversation.

Cecil had been asking Janice about school when Steve finally broke.

“That school is disgracefully underfunded,” he began, “If the City Council would stop wasting taxpayer money on unnecessary and fraudulent construction projects, we would have more funds to devote to really important things, like our schools.”

“Steve,” she said warningly, but Cecil jumped in with,

“You just lack the civic pride to see that Night Vale deserves as many architectural feathers in its cap as the City Council sees fit to provide.”

“Like a collapsed drawbridge over no water? That’s something to be proud of? We’ve wasted millions on it and the engineers haven’t even figured what drawbridges are made of! Well, I’ve been reading. I do that. Read. And I can tell you that real drawbridges are made of-”

Carlos, who’d been quiet for most of dinner, jerked suddenly in his chair and Steve stopped talking in surprise – just as if Carlos had kicked him under the table. She and Cecil both turned to stare at him in shock as he leaned forward and looked directly into Steve’s eyes.

“Heavy things that could kill people when they fall down,” he said meaningfully, “It’s better that they keep trying with cardboard and furniture upholstery.”

There was silence for a moment. She could see Cecil trying to work out what was happening. Then Steve sighed.

“You’re right,” he said, “I know you’re right. It’s just so frustrating to watch them waste all this money on engineers who don’t even know what they’re doing!”

“Carlos?” said Cecil, “Are you also against the drawbridge project?”

Carlos projected his voice over them, as if speaking directly to the hidden microphones. “I don’t think an outsider has any place having an opinion on what the City Council decides to do with Night Vale’s discretionary funds.” Then he relaxed back in his chair and took another bite of stroganoff.

Cecil threw her a triumphant glare, as if to say, “See? _My_ boyfriend knows how to express an unapproved opinion without putting himself and his family at risk for reeducation, and _he’s_ been here for less than two years!” But he didn’t attack Steve again, and they both let the conversation drift back to what Janice was making in art class.

She’d been trying for years to act as a buffer between these two difficult men that she loved, and Carlos had already managed to do it better.

And that wasn’t even the worst thing about him.

  1.  **Cecil loved him.**



Cecil had called her even before he’d announced it on the radio.

“Carlos asked me out!” he had squealed, “He finally, _finally_ asked me out!”

“After a month,” she had said.

“Well, yes, but he’s been in recovery from the bowling alley incident and then I’m sure he had some important science to do, but the point is that he called now! We’re going out to dinner tonight, at Gino’s.”

“Pretty fancy first date coming from someone who couldn’t be bothered for four weeks.”

“That may have been my idea.”

“Of course.”

“But the date itself was his idea. And it was his idea to call me a month ago after the bowling alley. I was the one he wanted to see after a painful near-death experience. That means something.”

“Of course he called you, Cecil! He almost died alone, and unmourned. Of course he called the only person in this town who’d miss him if he were gone! He doesn’t care about you! He’s just lonely.”

Cecil had been quiet for a long time, and she’d worried a little that she’d gone too far. But she hadn’t regretted saying it – it was what he needed to hear. Then Cecil had finally gathered himself.

“Carlos has never pretended, nor have I presumed, that he feels as strongly about me as I do about him. But he is at least interested now, and it is enough that he’s interested. Maybe that will turn into something deeper, maybe it won’t, but I am glad that he is now, genuinely, giving us a chance. Carlos is _not_ using me, to assuage his loneliness, or for any other reason.”

“Then why did it take him a year and almost dying to make him want to see you the first time? Why did he wait an _entire month_ before asking to see you again?”

“I am not taking romantic advice from the woman who married Steve Carlsberg! You are wrong about Carlos. You’ll see that soon.”

Well, she already had more than enough things to fight with her brother about, so she’d accepted that she’d said her piece, and never spoke another word against Carlos. And she knew that Cecil, who could never keep his mouth shut about how he felt about anything, assumed that must mean that she _had_ changed her mind about him.

But tonight, so long after that conversation, as she watched the two of them drive away - the taste of veal chocolate chip ice cream lingering on her tongue, a now completely happy Janice waving excitedly beside her - she reflected on all of the reasons she had to hate him even more than before. Carlos was perfect, and nice; he was good with Janice and with Steve; Cecil loved him. And he was an outsider. Someday, he would find a reason to leave Night Vale, whether it was more exciting science somewhere else or homesickness for the life he left behind, and when that happened, she didn’t think that the kind of “love” that had let him put Cecil off for more than a year would hold him for very long.

She hated him for fitting so quickly into their family, and the hole that he would already leave behind.

 

* * *

 

“It seemed almost like you like Steve Carlsberg,” Cecil commented, as they drove away from his sister’s house.

“He’s not so bad,” said Carlos.

“How can you possibly say that?”

“He listens to your show.”

“Lots of people listen to my show, Carlos. I may be tooting my own horn here, but it is kind of popular.”

“He listens to your show,” Carlos said again, more firmly, “So he hears all the horrible things you say about him on the air. Yet he is _always_ , unfailingly, nice to you.”

Cecil didn’t say anything.

“I am irrevocably prejudiced in favor of people who like my boyfriend, even if my boyfriend doesn’t like them back,” Carlos continued.

“That is completely backwards,” Cecil said, but without taking his eyes from the road, Carlos could tell from his voice that Cecil was fighting back a smile.

“Oh, who cares about Steve, anyway? Janice called me Uncle Carlos!”

“I know! I know, oh that was so cute!”

“I really, really like her, Cecil, she is _such_ a great kid.”

“Janice really likes you too, _Uncle_ _Carlos_.”

Carlos risked taking his eyes off the road for a second so that he and Cecil could grin at each other like idiots.

“Your sister’s kind of quiet,” Carlos went on, after a moment, “But I think she likes me too, right?”

“Well, _of course_ she does,” said Cecil confidently, “Why wouldn’t she like you?”

**Author's Note:**

> The ending was a little less wrenching when I drafted this before A Carnival Comes to Town and Carlos making that comment about the desert being the most scientifically interesting community he'd ever seen. So I just wanted to say for the record that I think Cecil's sister is wrong about how much Carlos loves Cecil and that even she realized that and came around to him sometime after Condos. Though she's probably back to hating him again now that he's staying in that desert. He's going to have to bring over way more than ice cream and homework help when he finally comes home! (He will definitely be coming home.)


End file.
